Cut Cabbage

 

I’m a poor but happy follower of the Way
whatever happens takes care of my needs
last night the west wind blew down an old tree
at daybreak firewood covered the ground
windblown white silk wreathed the red scarps
dewdrop pearls adorned the green cliffs
my survival has always depended on what’s present
why should I tire myself out making plans

-- Stonehouse, tr. Red Pine 

I'm interested in the traces I feel I can sense of the effect of the word "Way" in various minds. Ask the average Taoist or Zennist about it, and you can hear some overlap in their replies, but it's not a matchup, the way their image of "noodles" or "ocean" might be. This leaves me wondering what idiot came up with the word "Way" in the first place. Trying to confuse us, eh?

The more I muse on all this, the more I feel like candles and chants risk more hindrance than help. When it's time to cut up some cabbage, just pick up the knife and cut cabbage.

-- shonin

One head

 I've brought a head of red cabbage into the tiny hut kitchen to blanch, pickle and water bath can, using the few narrowmouth lids I have on hand (small jars). About half of this will go in the freezer. All will be small batches, to have with rice, spuds or noodles. 

[later] All done; it made about six pints of canned "imitation kimchi" in jars and five pints in bags in the hut freezer. That's enough for about thirty-three meals for me, in combination with other ingredients.

Two heads, they say, are better than one, but thirty-three meals' worth of cabbage is a lot for me in one year. So it's as well that only one of my cabbages made a head! I'm fine with that; the collards did much better and will likely be the main winter veg this year.

We are a two-headed species. One head witnesses a singing bird. The other talks to itself: "Oh, there's a singing bird." This monologue appears to be a step away from the world, or what could be called nature, even though of course the monologue occurs within nature -- it can't be anywhere else! But we fool ourselves.

The epitome of such fooling is when we try, sometimes with horrible success, to fool one another. As a civilization we're approaching fully automated 24/7 fooling, with a corresponding massive leap in gratuitous suffering.

Zen folks have a project to let go of that second head, for as much of the time as is practicable. Releasing the past as regret, releasing the future as expectation, hear the bird, see the garden, inhale, exhale, cut the cabbage.

-- shonin 

The Woman Lets It Be

Hidden Lamp, p.62

 

Master Langye Huijue had a woman disciple who came to him for instruction.  The master told her to examine the saying “Let it be.”  He said that if she faithfully used this sentence as a scythe, she would cut down illusions and reap enlightenment.

 

The woman followed his instructions faithfully.  One day her house burned down and she said, “Let it be.”  ....

One day she started to make fried cakes for dinner as her husband lit the fire.  She prepared the batter and heated the oil, then poured a spoonful of batter into the hot oil.

 

When she heard the sizzling sound, she was immediately enlightened.  She threw the pan to the ground and jumped up and down, clapping her hands and laughing.

 

Her husband shouted at her, “What are you doing?  Have you gone mad?”  She answered, “Let it be.”

 

Then she went to Huijue and he confirmed that she had indeed harvested the holy fruit.

 

No aversion

 I get questions about hermitary cookery.

There might not be much to tell; I'll try.

There are as many ways to cook and eat as there are people. Some ways are just "I'll eat whatever they parachute into this refugee camp" or "well, I sure hope I get to eat in the rapidly approaching afterlife." In other words, eating, let alone cooking, is a privilege in the world, more so, perhaps, than when foraged food was all there was to be had.

So, I'm conflicted about what may appear to be showing off. On the other hand, mindful eating can be an exercise in responsible behavior. I do think that my solitary routine, now established, is less wasteful, more nutritious, and healthier than before. While that may not do much for the world, it does something. Dogen tells us a little is a lot in Buddhist practice. You never know where a given small yet sincere practice will take you, but usually not to anyplace those around you will regard as a hindrance. Taking proper care of yourself takes care of others in many ways, often unforeseen.

Dogen wrote a small treatise, the title of which can be loosely translated "Instructions for the Monastery Head Cook (Tenzo)," which was/is intended as a guide to ethically feeding, in effect, a commune. 

Also the position tends to be a rotating one. Everyone has already been told to tough it out if you prove to be untalented, and by gosh they had better be thankful for it. So it's great that I, an untalented cook with only one patron, don't at all mind most of my mistakes. If it's truly inedible, just apologize to it with a gassho and add it to the compost.

In my movements and attitude, to the extent possible for me, I follow the "Instructions to the Tenzo. "

Here's the kitchen. The hut is nine feet wide. Most daily use items fit along a six foot section of one wall. Some supplies and less frequently used items are stored under or above the sewing table, alongside the opposite wall. Indoor plants and a basin and ewer share the space, along with baskets of fabric and sundries.

You can see I'm a pack rat, dating back to days of actual rather than currently simulated poverty. Everything here is hand-me-downs. I think that matters in the case of an attached hermitary, because I'm duplicating equipment already available in the kitchen of the household. But that kitchen, in a 1950s starter bungalow, is also tiny and the other family members have their own dietary requirements. We stay out of one another's hair, so to speak.

The hut has one wall outlet with its own circuit breaker, good for up to twenty amps, which enforces attentive power usage. The tiny fridge is on all the time, so the kettle and microwave and rice cooker and space heater can be used in twos but not in threes or fours. This enforces some discipline and thinking ahead, especially in winter.

As homesteaders/nomads, we used to cook on a smallish wood stove, the top of which enforced a similar discipline: a pot of water for washing dishes might take up half the surface and a Dutch oven with beans or bread in it taking up the other half. We inverted their lids and set bowls of whatever on them to simmer. My current efforts reflect the frugality of those years.

Back in the day

I forage very locally, mostly on this one city lot.

We don't use herbicides or pesticides, so I safely wander around the yard, then the garden. What draws my interest? In season, chicory, dandelions, nipplewort, narrow leaf plantain, crimson clover, deadnettle, cat’s ears, blackberry leaves, fir or spruce needles, money plant, parlsey, sage, rosemary, thyme, Bigleaf maple flowers, willow leaves, herb Robert, and crop foliage such as kale, chard, beet greens, squash blossoms and leaves, pea and bean foliage, corn silk, and the like.

Out of season, many of these are not as bitter as some foraging websites will tell you, and if worst comes to worst, for the pot I steam first and reserve the bitter stock to give to my house plants or garden.

Often the yard is so productive I don't even make it into the garden. That's the maritime Pacific Northwest for you.

I bring my treasures into the hut and decide how they will be used. My cookery revolves around making tea (tisane) first. If what I gathered appeals to me as tea only, I put that in the tea strainer, set the strainer in a cup, run the kettle and pour boiling water over the foliage. It won't make much color in the cup unless there is something like beet greens, or I've dried the foliage, or I'm adding green tea or perhaps Darjeeling. That's fine. Minimalists need not be nutrition maximalists, let alone flavor maximalists, except perhaps if they can afford some loose-packed Darjeeling.

This tea is to have when Zooming with the sangha, or a friend, or while reading, or just watching the moon cross the window.

Next, I notice it's meal time. Some things that we all like to eat raw, I have to eat only a little of or not at all, so I do tend to focus on the steamer.

The little Aroma rice steamer, which is the heart of the hermitary kitchen, was handed down because it forgot its time limit for making rice. So I have to keep an eye on it for that cycle. I may use that for rice, or lentils, or root vegs, but I don't need a lot, and I'm not a fan of the coating on the metal liner you're supposed to cook in. My porcelain eating bowl fits inside the liner. So I put an inch of water from the pitcher (rain water, if it's fresh) inside the liner and set the bowl in that. 

I'm also not fond of the plastic steamer basket that came with the appliance, so that added to my interest in learning to cook in various ways in the bowl.

I then cut up any root vegs I'm using, including skins if possible, or pour in the rice or lentils, and add water, salt, spices as needed. Set on Rice or sometimes twice on Steam. Udon I find I can make on Steam (5 minutes), though the consistency might not be to everyone's taste. Summer vegs such as zucchini should wait out the first five minutes and then be thrown in, chopped. Density is my guide here.

Meanwhile, if I'm adding greens, I have options. I might use what's in the strainer, if it's not anything I really shouldn't try to eat (for example, willow bark). Or I may choose to roll up some dandelion and chicory leaves with onion greens in a leaf of collard or kale and chop small, then check to see if the carbs are done, then turn off the rice steamer, pop in the greens (and maybe small tomatoes and such), and close the lid for some residual-heat cooking.

The bowl will be a little hot to fish out of the liner with my fingers, as there's little room along the sides, so I grab the bowl with a handy pair of side-cutting pliers and set it on a coaster. Here I may add more seasoning or soy sauce as desired. I pour some water in a cup and keep it handy, or if the broth is palatable, I'll use that, and sit down and eat.

This can be a wet way to eat, so I often pour off the liquids to drink. This is a matter of taste; in Japan folks eat the solids, then drink liquids from the bowl as a chaser. Great! I have to spend a lot of time in my zero gravity chair and pretty much only eat there, so draining the bowl first saves me trouble with wet chin and fabric.

I mostly rotate four "recipes" based on rice, then potatoes, then lentils, then noodles, through the two daily meals and there is my week. For snacks there might be a deadfall apple or whatever comes my way.

I used to do a lot more drying of fruits and foliage than needed for the winters and now mostly just set aside some of my foraging to dry on a hardware-cloth shelf in the "greenhouse," or chop it all up to stuff into an ice cube tray, maybe with a bit of olive oil, for itinerant use.

Aside from this routine, I grind mixed grains in the Corona once a year and jar it up for the occasional breakfast with apple butter, and if I have extra fruit or root vegs on hand I may get out the small graniteware water bath canner and make preserves or pickled vegs to use over the winter, in very small jars.

 
The herb Robert and willow are part of my efforts to treat leukemia. 

I wouldn't ask anyone to try to duplicate my diet, but I do encourage experimentation for those interested in simplifying. This kind of food prep and eating is adaptable to many situations, especially for anyone living alone in a small space. Also it is a very portable way to eat, though maybe not as Spartan as this: Cooking Without a Kitchen: The Coffeemaker Cookbook

By not unnecessarily frequenting restaurants and supermarkets, it is possible to simplify quite a lot. Some foods are becoming scarce and I like to think I am leaving it on the shelves for someone else. 

I think the complexity of our civilization has a lot of inflicted suffering to live down. Courtesy shows there is a commons of the heart.  🙏

-- shonin 

If you only have wild grasses with which to make a broth, do not disdain them ... Where there is no attachment, there can be no aversion. -- Dogen

Hermiting is universal

I'm spending a lot more time in the hut. It's a tool shed dating back to the 50s, rebuilt for zazen practice and teleconferencing with the sangha (we mostly only meet online). I grow vegetables close at hand, pick "weeds" for tea, and use the tiny kitchen quite a lot. The leukemia seems to be in stasis for now. I greet crows outside my window.

Makeshift interior walls, makeshift altar, makeshift nun. At 76 and newly fragile health-wise, I sit here at the computer and commingle with my peers in the form of streams of electrons.

The kitchen is just a rice cooker, micro sized microwave, electric kettle, and a few jars and cans and utensils, most of them in a little hand-me-down butcher block table. I do most of my cooking in my eating bowl set inside the rice cooker liner in an inch or so of water. Works great. Kitchen table was my grandmother's from the 1930s. I ran my forehead into it on my scooter when I was three and just about knocked myself out. 

I'm told I got up and tried again and again. Whirr, wham! Whirr, wham! There's a lesson in that somewhere.

Stepping outside. The han is a plaque a friend made for me. I don't use it very often as there is no one to call with it and it's too near the neighbors. But I like having it. The mallet is a leatherworker's mallet that I retrieved from a dumpster somewhere.

Manzoku-an (Hermitage of Enough) is a former tool shed at the end of what was once a long carport. It's nine by thirteen feet. I've built a little courtyard for it using framed reed mats. I have used this hut for part-time hermiting off and on for nine years, overlapping with the previous hut, Gogo-an (10X10'), which I used for about the same span, or for a combined total of eleven years.

 What have I learned from this activity? Not so very much; the skills for living simply -- even somewhat starkly -- were acquired in childhood, as my parents encouraged me in running wild in the woods. At thirteen I camped for a week on an island in a swamp in subzero weather, building a kind of beaver lodge for myself of sticks and leaves. I kept a fire going at the entrance, and chopped ice for water from the frozen creek with a hatchet.

As a young adult, I lived in a succession of yurts, vehicles and small travel trailers, moving from place to place for forestry contracting, and did not fully return to "civilization" until I was thirty-six. I then worked at a university for twenty-two years and retired, at fifty-nine, to farm an acre. Hand tools were the order of the day -- an intention to return to simplicity.

When I began to study Zen with a teacher, I looked around the farm for a place to sit quietly out of the way, and the children's abandoned playhouse filled the bill. It did not take me long to move in a few items and begin cooking and even sometimes sleeping there as well as sitting zazen. This sort of thing just felt natural to me, and the family supported my efforts.

When I discovered an online sangha to sit with, I brought a laptop out to the hut, Gogo-an, and practiced with them, even participating in an online ango and rohatsu. This was a change from hermiting -- or was it? Our routine was much like that of the Discalced Carmelite sisters, each in her own hut but gathering with the others for ritual. 

Along came the pandemic and my local sangha moved online as well, where it has stayed ever since. Such groups have a bit of a Carmelite flavor. Many of the people with whom I sit zazen or sesshin live alone. Many others practice with the assent of family members, but most do sit alone in their choice of room (or sometimes outdoors), as teleconferencing tends to place each person in a box, containing mostly a face, with perhaps an altar and bookcase in frame.

This mode of being isolated in company is not unfamiliar to monks and nuns in a monastery or local sangha. Benedictines gather, but each is alone with God in the company of others, perhaps to the extent of wearing a hooded cowl, or in the case of nuns, a coif, wimple and veil. Muslims have the sajada, or prayer rug, again alone with God amid the multitude. Zen practitioners tend to sit in a row, all facing the same direction, each alone with Dharma. Every religious person is already a hermit.

Religion, as we tend to define it, may not be the whole Venn diagram here.

People who live alone generally, or find themselves alone with or among others (there are many single beds in apartments, houses and ship cabins), or even who find themselves walking to the waterfront to commune with gulls and the stench of the wharf, are also hermits. Never make the mistake of supposing that someone who stops only briefly to admire a daffodil has had no important business there.

Some may think they do not have hermiting skills, but I think we all do. What we may lack is the expectation that we'll have to live simply for an extended period of time, which can take some planning and prioritization. And in fact, though I have done that, it's not really what I'm doing right now; the hut is fifty feet from shared modern conveniences -- my bedroom is in the house. 

But I like to practice living simply in the hut, to keep the skills up (y'know "just in case," or in case someone else needs to know the little that I know) and to support my Buddhist practice. I'm doing a lot of sits. I find they're "good" for me; I need centering. It's cheaper than psychotherapy.

As we find ourselves more and more constrained by our unwieldy modernity, with the likelihood of catastrophic weather events, pandemics and crop failures, we may make some effort, as is always commendable, to ease the burdens of those around us but cannot hope, as individuals, to remedy all. 

What we can hope to do on our small scale (along with whatever else we're up to) is recognize that much of the time, what we might call down time or at least our in-between times, is what Buddhists call practice, which I will provisionally term as hermiting. Prayer, recollection, meditation, sittin' at the dock o' th' bay, admiring a daffodil, these are things that most anyone can do as they come to them, but I think we also, many of us, recognize that there are skilled ways of going about solitude. We know skilled loners when we see them, whether in films, videos, or sidewalk encounters.

Your bedroom, your kitchen, your study (if you have one), your creekside path, your hut attached to the family home or in its back yard -- your brief alone time "amid the noise and the haste" is your practice place. Whatever practice you do there, may it flow as a spring of water of life for you, and may you, in your short time here, find whatever you may recognize as blessing.

 -- shonin

Some cold tea

The renovations that took place here seven years ago led to there being a massive pile of rubble and old cinderblocks and another of lumber studded with rusty bent nails, which quickly acquired a covering of very robust Himalaya blackberries. 

I'd had a notion of building some kind of greenhouse/shadehouse out of these bits and bobs, but renters occupied much of the premises during most of that time, and I felt shy of hammering and sawing in their sunbathing space, so ... but this year, I resolved to evict the blackberries and put up a structure in their stead, using the materials now solidly locked in their embrace.

Once the cutting, uprooting re-piling and tilling was done (this took a couple of months), I sorted materials, pulled nails, and meditated on the shape of the space. It would be about ten feet by sixteen, and would need to be tall enough to allow for a door, yet low enough not to exceed the height of my neighbor's wooden fence, which stood only six feet tall on a curb of about fourteen inches height along the property line.

I had imported the screen door from the farm, ideal for the purpose as it was made of wood and had been cut down to accommodate a low porch ceiling. I attached the door to the back corner of Manzoku-an with hinges and framed it. The height of the door frame determined the height of the east-facing wall of the structure, facing in toward the back yard. I then bolted a two-by four, eleven feet long, across the back of the hut, with enough slope to shed water past the door. This would determine the height of the walls and height and slope of the roof.

From there, I proceeded to wrap walls around to the east and north, always using wood from the rapidly diminishing pile, framing in scrap windows as I went.

It was now possible to roof the space, which was done with corrugated fiberglass also found in the pile.

On the floor, with some digging, I managed to create a path of sorts using the rubble and cinderblocks.

It would be nice to have raised beds, but I've used up the materials. So, for now, I'll spread straw. The uphill bed is straight, about fifteen feet long, and the downhill bed is a kind of keyhole pattern.

I've brought in the seedling shelves, potting table and tools, freeing up a bit of breathing room for Manzoku-an, where they spent the last year.

 

Yes, it's close to the fence line, but Manzoku-an predates the fence, this is a tiny agricultural project, and it's free-standing. None of it is attached to the fence.

Will this thing work? I expect there will be problems at first. At the moment the ambient temperature is 76F, the hut has 83 and the greenhouse is a toasty 92 (!!) -- but of course I'm not bothering to shade and ventilate much until next summer. It's not a proper shadehouse with such big windows, nor is it a proper greenhouse as it does not face south, but -- assuming I have allowed enough light -- I feel it has some potential toward season extending. We'll see.

Left to right: "deer fence," Manzoku-an, "greenhouse," tool shed. 
Some leftover used lumber is stored on the hut's roof.

The last construction project for the year is deer proofing the old and new beds with a bit of chicken wire fence. Whether it will work is for the deer to decide.

I think will go now and sit in the shade with some cold tea.

-- shonin

There are four inherent attributes to tea: peacefulness, respectfulness, purity and quietness. -- Martine Batchelor

A droplet amid the rain

"The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly." -- Wikipedia

 You know the commons when you see it. 

Rain is falling on "your" garden, where it becomes "your" water, and from the corner of your eye, you see a hummingbird zip in and snatch a droplet from the air. Secure in the knowledge that there is enough, this rain that you share, you admire the hummingbird and feel no grudge arising in your gullet. Rather, you feel at one with the hummingbird.

It's a little tougher to acknowledge this when you discover that a pocket gopher has shared in the commons of the beets at your feet. Perhaps you think of ways, some violent, some less so, of preventing more such sharing. 😅 To hoard is human; we're not the only species that does that, but we're certainly special in a way that's nothing to be proud of, I think.

Use of force, whether warfare or simple privatization, is enclosure. Usually it can be described as class warfare over the commons, wherein those who have styled themselves as an "upper" class forcibly exclude others from resources. Disinformation is the barbed wire with which the few fence off knowledge from the many, in order to commodify resources once held in common or in equitable distribution.

Much of what we think of as religion is enclosure; some of us have a god or gods to whom we offer prayers in the form of special pleading for the fruits of a prosperity gospel. "Give to me grapes, milk and honey, to show these Canaanites they worship false gods," we say, and feel justified in displacing the Canaanites from the lands they have cultivated. Prosperity epistemology, prosperity ontology, above all prosperity teleology, with big box stores to provide us with ever more fencing and locked gates. 

Centralization/industrialization is enclosure; where once villages of weavers stood, utilizing local wool, a wagon came to carry away baled wool to a mill on a river, and the very gravity (a commons) that made the river sing is enclosed in the wheel to drive enclosed looms attended by enclosed workers to create enclosed clothing for sale in enclosed shops.

And there is, seemingly, never an end to the complexification that ensues. The crofter's looms were but a livelihood, whereas the mill on the river is a profit to an encloser, but not enough (never enough), so that then the wool must go overseas to a windowless enclosed room with enclosed humming machines attended by other machines with enclosed (prorietary) software, to make products to be shipped back overseas and sold (enclosed).

And so it goes. 

For now.

Meanwhile some of us rediscover some irreducible commons in various places. 

It's cheap to sit staring at a wall.

Bodhidharma is said to have said:

Those who turn from delusion back to reality, who meditate on walls, the absence of self and other, the oneness of mortal and sage, and who remain unmoved even by scriptures are in complete and unspoken agreement with reason. -- Two Entrances and Four Practices

I've mentioned my difficulty in sitting facing a wall. Well, I can sit "reclined." My current practice wall is the ceiling.

Sometimes this sitting provides an opportunity for attentive chanting, or for visualizing taking and sending of suffering. This is because practice is not enclosed; it's for the benefit of all. Otherwise why bother? I can calm myself down or lower my blood pressure by artificial means which are probably more efficient than "practice."

But the air I breathe is a commons, as is the light entering the room. Everywhere there are ceilings; those of us who are lying down at home may study them. Those who are lying in ambulances may regard them. Those who lie in hospital beds or return home to hospice may take note of them. At last, there may be a ceiling within a grave; the body resting there does not, perhaps, take note of such a ceiling, but there is a sense in which it is indeed a commons.

The enclosers will charge for the beds, the doctors, and the grave, and certainly for all the ceilings, but for them the view of the ceiling is an intangible; its value has eluded them. It will always elude them, I think.

So, it's there for you to harvest. 

 

Take it as your fair share, as you might take a droplet amid the rain.

 

-- shonin 

Many are

Mixed signs abound; after the storm, leaves shredded
by hail loll about on the street and
are investigated by crows. Where have the

birds been, all these baked-earth and baked-sky
days? And now they vanish again, as heat
resumes, as gardens wilt, as humans scurry

into delicious air inside sly merchants' shade.
I choose, as viruses have not, despite assurances,
abated, to limit myself, in straw Asian hat,

to observing this stuttering start to autumn
at first hand in the yard, at second hand
while putting away bought things the family's

acquired for me, before retiring once again
to the hermitary, converted tool shed
behind the house at the end of the drive

to zoom into the ether and sit
zazen with a few, who know
where to find me, some quiet, and themselves.

Many are hermits in just this way, though they
might not see it in these terms. A daily
routine within walls, or gardens, or

property lines: boundaries we create
of imagined air clean enough to inhale
without becoming a burden to our loves.

It's not much of a poem but shows what I've been thinking about. Autumn is trying hard to come in, with a strong system off the Pacific having filled our dried-up rain barrels, and awakened all the animals that seemed to be hiding somewhere after the heat waves, one of them topping 100°(f) for five days. We have another heat wave coming in September that looks to go over 90 for five days, with one more day pushing 100. But, yeah, plants have started putting on their fall plumage and the nights are cool.

I notice these things from the yard and while sitting in the "veranda" (basically a deck roof but no deck, just grass growing out of sand), or working in the garden. I have leukemia (slow, the CLL kind) and old age and what not, and a basic shyness with added cognitive decline, so I'm no longer a driver and now no longer a walker of the neighborhood sidewalks, unless someone is with me.

I'm also careful to breathe clean air. Weak lungs and all that, and I don't think much of the current official advice on viruses: Covid has surged hard this summer, and has been proven to have a long tail for many even when not initially presenting with symptoms. Even though my immune system is probably not very compromised, I see no reason to court disaster just because the CDC wants to avoid angering the nation's rentier class.

This adds a burden to the family; they mask up to go get groceries and feel a little self-conscious about it. But they agree that we, as a nuclear family with only one remaining driver, are exposed to too many potential unforeseen circumstances, so a few relatively easily achieved precautions are rational for us.

I spend time on federated social media and am seeing a lot of posts with this kind of thinking; it's like there is an emerging hermit class.

It's, for many, a privileged class, supported by the shipping phenomenon and an underclass (that's, alas, what it is) of front-line warehouse workers, store clerks and delivery people, many drawn from marginalized populations, who are getting sick repeatedly, and many of whom end up horizontal on couches, joining the ranks of those who must be maintained at cost to their tiny social safety nets or overworked social services.

This is like treading water after a ship sank. Many who thought themselves well-to-do are in the water with the people who brought them groceries or rotated their tires. I think there will be more of this and perhaps much more.

Against this slow-motion dystopian background, I think about what my role can or even "should" be. I have some intellect remaining, so I spend most of my days (and nights) doomscrolling for what I think might be the best policies and advice concerning climate, health, extreme weather resilience, and domestic and international relations, including resource wars, to share with whomever wishes to hear all this.

Buddhism came to me in the guise of how one might best behave on a sinking ship (or in the water afterwards); a kind of hospice manual:

"There are four kinds of wisdom that benefit living beings: giving, kind speech, beneficial deeds, and cooperation. These are the practices of the vow of the bodhisattva" -- Dogen.

Clearly the instructions are intended for face-to-face interaction, yet here I am hanging out mostly in my homemade hermitary, a repurposed tool shed. Right; well, my excuses, with the admission of privilege, are as stated above, and my practice (when not raising vegetables) is an online practice. It is twofold: curate links to sensible adaptive choices in a deteriorating system ("secular") and offer opportunities for zazen practice and discussion of anattā and its implications ("religious").

Of course, sometime soon I (we) might not have Internet access. What then? Well, much of the time, when I have my nose out of the computer, I sit in the veranda and watch. There's not much to watch: the clothesline, the power poles that run along our alley instead of our street, some fruit trees, and houses belonging mostly to absentee Airbnb owners. It's a restful spot.

 

Birds sit the wires in seasonal rotation. Swallows and purple finches have moved off, and currently starlings are passing through. Starlings were permanent residents at the farm in the last decade; before that, they migrated past us as they do here in spring and fall. And we're no longer under the flyway; I miss the honking of vees of geese while I worked the farm garden.

The distance between these two locations is fourteen miles. This variability of population is interesting; I can speculate about it for hours. What's not to entertain?

Or I just ... sit. Right there, every blade of grass continually establishes the temple of the whole universe. What's not to contemplate?

I think the phenomenon of "hermit" life goes vastly unremarked and underappreciated. In this neighborhood alone, many work among their flowers, vegetables and apple trees alone, contemplatively plying trowel and clippers. Kitchen work, too, is often undertaken alone yet not lonely, chopping, folding in, turning from counterspace to sink with a bowl, mind gathered to a single point.

My maternal grandmother had a huge extended family, but as they passed one by one, she accepted a small apartment near us and established a routine of bible study and housekeeping that lasted until she breathed her last. My paternal grandmother outlived all but one son and accepted a small single-wide trailer in his back yard, sitting out front and shelling beans as the geese passed over.

Who's to say they were not practiced eremitic meditators? They both, by the way, faced pancreatic cancer at the end and both dealt with it by no longer eating, with a silent yet not sad patience I admired.

There must be millions of these "hermits," widows, widowers, the divorced, or separated, or abandoned to end-of-life care facilities, or, among those younger, simply content to rise, go forth to stamp books behind a library desk, go home and sit by a window watching people with umbrellas scurry along rain-swept streets, or, or ...

... and not necessarily unhappy about it. Even many who strongly enjoy being social also enjoy solitude.

The worldwide assumption of a religious or even secular requirement that to do well one must do for others does not come with a meter. A quiet life has this to recommend it: those living contented with little typically do not generate much of this world's distress. As such they can serve as models for a life not dependent upon material culture for "happiness."

That in itself benefits living beings.

-- shonin

 

Rice and veg

 

I grew some things and chopped them up. I steamed them enough to call them blanched, and steeped them in rice vinegar and honey.  

It's not like I can't or don't buy groceries, but occasional water-bath canning gives one the cheery sound of lids popping, and a sense of life going ahead.

Pop. Pop. Six or seven times, then go look at the moon.

This is preparation for a winter in the hermitary. 

Pickled veg is famously what Asian hermits have with their rice (when they have rice), especially in winter. Stonehouse recalled having gone through a hundred crocks of pickles, more or less, at his hermitage.

Stonehouse  had a hermitage, whereas I merely have a hermitary, that is, in my case, a she-cave attached to a comfortable home. Sincerity comes in bursts of a few seconds; I feel I would make a terrible Zen leader. 

That's all right. We are bubbles on the stream. When I see three seconds of sincerity, I jump on -- free ride! 

In the morning, rice and veg.

-- shonin 

 

Forty-some years I've
Lived in the mountains,
Ignorant of the world's
Rise and fall.
Warmed at night by a stove
Full of pine needles;
Satisfied at noon by a bowl
Of wild plants;
Sitting on rocks
Watching clouds and empty thoughts;
Patching my robe in sunlight;
Practicing silence
Till someone asks
Why Bodhidharma came east,
And I hang out my wash

-- Shiwu (Stonehouse) tr. Red Pine

No problem

 

 
People who are unwell may find that their options appear to be limited. Waking with a dry mouth and eyes and a hammering heart, they wonder if they are going to be able to get up this morning; then they find (this time) that they can do it. They get up and go do a few chores, then find themselves short of breath and the hammer heart has not gone away, which is a little new. They go back to bed and sleep at midday, then awaken to find there is a cup of tea left for them on the side table by a concerned family member. It's not quite hot; that was an unexpectedly long nap.

Perhaps they struggle up again, re-heat the tea, and, spilling a little (Oh, hot!), wander out back to sit in the sun, going over what chores remain that could be done somehow. "I might move that little ash tree that came up in the lawn, find it a better home. I wonder where the shovel for that is."

Planning a task is not failure to be in the moment. Those who go out shopping must sequence their activities: "bag, check. List, check. Keys, check. Phone, check. Okay, leave a cup of tea for the old-timer and say I'm going out. Oh, she's out cold. Well, she'll figure it out. I'll just tiptoe away."

All these activities are miracles of right now. Planning and listing are the sort of thing those new to zen may feel they must struggle against, but not so. The past vanishes into memory and the future is merely ideation, but these memories and ideas are indubitably part of the present moment.

The trick is to be all of you all the time, because you are all of the universe, with its air and warmth and tea passing through "you," along with the sound of jays out back for the old-timer and the changing colors of the stop light for the shopper. If what you are doing is what you are doing, inhabit all of it, like a star shining into all parts of its stellar system and on into the great beyond.

-- shonin

Katagiri says: 

Taking care of right now is coping with an emergency case. So when a moment comes, whatever happens, just face your life as it really is, giving away any ideas of good or bad, and try your best to carry out what you have to do. You can do this; you can face your life with a calm mind and burn the flame of your life in whatever you do. This is Buddha’s practice. That’s why teachers always tell you to practice, devote yourself to doing something, and forget yourself. When you forget yourself and put your wholehearted effort into facing every moment, you can do something, and simultaneously you can rest in the continuous flow of life energy. Then you really enjoy your life. 

Suzuki adds:

Knowing that your life is short, to enjoy it day after day, moment after moment, is the life of "form is form, and emptiness emptiness." When Buddha comes, you will welcome him; when the devil comes, you will welcome him. The famous Chinese Zen master Ummon, said, "Sun-faced Buddha and moon-faced Buddha." When he was ill, someone asked him, "How are you?" And he answered, "Sun-faced Buddha and moon-faced Buddha." That is the life of "form is form and emptiness is emptiness." There is no problem. One year of life is good.

Nap time

 

 

I have been reading Zen poets.
Cold Mountain resents his limp,
his former married life,

his former neighbors,
and envies, I suspect,
the beauty of youth.

He's at his best
lying on moss, letting
icy creek water

clean his ears, or so
he says. I'll trust him
on that; it's not like I have

no resentments of my own!
Stonehouse is enamored
of his little clay stove

which he feeds leaves
while he sits close, listening
to gibbons down the mountain,

howling. Does he ever invite
them to tea? I'll trust that
he does, and lets them

sit warm with him in the long
winter. Great Fool is
my favorite; when not tacking

calligraphy to his walls
by his lone oil lamp, he
sets out briskly in rain

to ask housewives for
a little rice, and visit
children who bounce balls

and count. I lean back
in my squeaky chair
and sip a bit of yard

tea, this one mostly cats'
ear and stinky bob herbs.
Gee, if I could write poems

like these three, what would
that be like? Dogen said
don't write poems at all,

as narrative is a trap.
Please note: Dogen wrote
hundreds. One more

sip, and it's nap time for me.

-- shonin

Samsara/entropy

She spreads a scrap of drape
chalks a white line to follow
wonders at the collision
of Buddha with Euclid

 

Here be fallacies and contradictions; but let us muddle on.

 

For about a year, I have been too out of it to sew, not to mention my eyes are not what they have been. But my health has unexpectedly improved in the last month or so.

 

I needed an envelope for a new rakusu, so I've revisited a neglected practice. The first stitches were horrible, but perseverance uncovers muscle memory. 

I intend the stitches to follow the more or less straight line of chalk. The thread wanders, sometimes above, sometimes below, the line as conceived. 

 

Even if to my eye the stitching were to go straight, a hand lens would disabuse me of that notion. 

 

At first I was aggravated by my lack of skill, but the gap between skill and sufficiency can never be fully closed, and you have to know when to punt. I've become tolerant of deviation.

A Euclidean object exists at most as a pattern (concept) across a substrate of neurons in our brains. 

 

Its expression into physical form is approximate (map vs. territory). For example, there are no true spheres in nature.

 

If you look at the surface of a bubble closely enough (under, say, an electron microscope), you find it is a polygon or polyhedron, or not even that, because the atoms found at the vertices are in flux.

 

There is no there there.

 

Buddha chose "anatta" as the core of his teaching. He was telling the Brahmins their concept of the everlasting soul is only a concept. 

An axle/wheel said to have gone "out of true" was called, in Buddha's culture, dukkha: when the deviation from the concept reaches the point of inconvenience to the task.

 

Skill may create a functional wheel, but not a perfect one. We know and can live with that. The skilled wheelwright creates a wheel that is within tolerance; no more is asked by the wise.

 

Insistence that our experience match our imaginings will give rise to dissatisfaction. 

This is what is meant by samsara. We are "running around in circles," chasing our delusions, which consist in expecting that idealism will bring us this supposed happiness: that there will not be entropy.

 

-- shonin 

Unless you consult particulars you cannot even know or see. 

--William Blake, Annotations to Reynolds.

 

Ceremony

 

We tuck roots in soil, not

knowing if we will see harvest

with wearing the robe,

it is the same.

 

Ceremoniously offering and accepting tea, 
teacher and student face each other 
across the small table. 

Who knew? ... when we were neighbors 
in the woods some fifty years ago, 
this moment would come?

-- shonin

The luminous moon drifts by so lightly,

The sutra hall lies silent without a sound.

Bits of moonlight pierce the cracks between the bamboo,

Its round refulgence perches in the intersecting pine branches.
The dew dampens the nests filled with noisy swallows,

The wind combs the grasses filled with croaking frogs.

I sit with the master after the ceremony is over

As, face to face, we straighten out our robes.

-- Shiyan, in Daughters of Emptiness tr./ed. Beata Grant

The bee moves on

Somewhere out back
the seven-year-old cherry
takes up its found duty
teaching evanescence

 

I sometimes don't make it out to the hut for two or three days at a time, especially in rain or snow. I've reached the age of more or less permanently camping in the easy chair, medications at hand, scarf wrapping neck, wall-gazing like Bodhidharma but with perhaps less intent, my sitting interlaced with napping, like Daughter's very old dog who lives with us still.

Son or Beloved bring me teas and nibblets. This perks me up, and seems to do them some good as well.

The thought experiments I've been sporadically attending to are: Occam's Razor and entropy.

Occam's idea, not completely original to him but close enough, is that there is no call to multiply entities needlessly. That is, if you fell off the cliff due to your own carelessness, you need not also attribute the fall to interference in your short life by a demon. 

Applying Occam will tend to lead one toward a monistic materialism devoid of teleology, which many physical scientists hold either explicitly or implicitly, for reasons. "Literary criticism is a branch of biology ( --I.A. Richards)."

Core Buddhism as it has come down to us does not have a lot of new ideas: 

1. there is suffering,
2. some suffering is self-inflicted,
3. stop that,
4. here's how.

It stands up well under Occam. 

Buddhism has acquired a lot of cultural accretions, some of which go back to the first generation or soon after. Many -- if not most -- of them may not stand up well under Occam.

Entropy can be thought of in lay terms as "everything runs down." 

To assemble what we may call a state or object, we must find and supply additional energy to the amount originally embodied in it to maintain it as such; otherwise it becomes other stuff. 

A car becomes not a car if it is set up on blocks and its wheels taken away. Leave it there long enough and it becomes an unwieldy and rather forlorn flowerpot.

Combine the razor and entropy when looking at the Four Truths and we get a pretty easily tested life engine that strikes me as having some ontological staying power.

Buddha's charioteer brought him to see the Four Sights, the first three of which were signs of entropy: old age, illness and death. The fourth was asceticism, a somewhat extreme response to the first three, which appealed to the young man and led to his years of practicing some rather severe yogas, as if punishing himself for being subject to entropy. 

After a rather simple meal offered to him, that is, some energy input to maintain his state as a living being, he decided against punishment and proclaimed a Middle Way: live without either seeking too great a buffer against entropy or too little. Entropy just is.

The bee checks out the cherry blossoms for at most a few days. The petals fall. The bee moves on. 

 -- shonin

The best way is not difficult

It only excludes picking and choosing.
-- Xinxin Ming tr. Pajin

Nothing need stop us

Slow moving illness
provides time to review
things done, not done:
release them all

Sitting in the new hut, Manzoku-an, or Hermitary of Quite Enough, she is running out of needs.

Buddha's great discovery was re-discovered millennia later. It's called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. As dharmas (things or beings) 

are not, or do not have ... 

... states ... 

... but are bundles of energy arriving and departing ... 

... they are ephemeral. 

All are equal, all equally evanescent. Resting from concern or anguish over that which is as it is, nothing need stop us from enjoying ourselves, as we might an evening of fireflies.

-- shonin


Whether I sit or I lie,
My spirit roams with the origin of things.
Singing alone or rhyming alone,
My joy runs to the edge of the sky.
-- Songs of National Preceptor Wongam (1226–1292) tr. Whitfield, Park

 

Lily

Dear Sangha, meet my new toy.

In my own case, it's not yet what it may seem: I walk a lot. Even hike, admittedly with two sticks. But I absolutely cannot stand in a queue. I have obtained the device to get in line for vaccinations and such.

I like it; amazing what all I can store under the seat. I'm sure it will come in even more handy later. 😄 What with the Second Law and all.

I think I will call it Lily, as it is my lily pad where I can sit and wait for whatever turns up. In the evening Jupiter, bright, resplendent. In the morning Venus, resplendent, bright.

-- shonin

A frog's way of sitting is much better than our zazen. I always admire their practice. They never get sleepy. Their eyes are always open, and they do things intuitively in an appropriate way. When something to eat comes by, they go like this: gulp! They never miss anything, they are always calm and still. -- Shunryu Suzuki

In the inn that is this world
People come and go in a flash.
The moon shines on the hill bamboo,
Alone I sit and hear the kingfishers.

Spring rain, a pondful of frogs:
Going in and out, like the drum beat,
Chanting and turning a thousand sutras.
What is the use of reading texts?

All my life I have lacked cleverness,
My early learning was sleeping beneath the trees.

-- Poems of Cheongheodang (1520–1604) tr. Whitfield and Park


If you want to comprehend this essence, you should know that the voices of frogs and worms, the sound of wind and raindrops, all speak the wonderful language of the dharma and that birds in flight, swimming fish, floating clouds, and flowing streams all turn the dharma wheel. -- Bassui

 

The luminous moon drifts by so lightly,

The sutra hall lies silent without a sound.

Bits of moonlight pierce the cracks between the bamboo,

Its round refulgence perches in the intersecting pine branches.
The dew dampens the nests filled with noisy swallows,

The wind combs the grasses filled with croaking frogs.

I sit with the master after the ceremony is over

As, face to face, we straighten out our robes.

-- Shiyan, in Daughters of Emptiness tr./ed. Beata Grant

 

furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto
an ancient pond / a frog jumps in / the splash of water -- Bassho

At my shady house,
My two legs stretched lazily,
I find endless joy
In hearing the summer frogs,
Singing in a hillside field.

-- Ryokan (tr. Nonoyuki Yuasa)

 

Nowhere is there anything hidden

 

From the hut window, I spotted a Cooper's hawk diving into the alley. It reappeared, settling on a power line, holding a stunned garter snake. A scrub jay flew over, parked within a couple of feet of the hawk, and clearly was talking to it, bobbing obsequiously, as much as to say, "you gonna eat all of that?" The hawk, seemingly a bit miffed, lifted its wings and made off to a distant walnut tree to eat in peace.

I gave the scene a little gassho.

What was that?

Sometimes we are the hawk; sometimes we are the scrub jay, and sometimes we are the snake.  Sometimes we are the suddenly snakeless grass. 

There is much to bow to.

When we gassho, one hand is us and the other is ... the other person, the thought we just had, that fleeting feeling, that old familiar pain, the mountain, the river, the hawk, the snake, the jay, the grass, leafless walnut, strumming wire between power poles, wind, hair falling in front of our eyes, a sudden truth revealed, a vulnerability, an unexpected strength, the altar, the universe. One with, one with, one, one, all, all, unspeakable, hence gestured, a candle flame at the ends of our arms, supporting, accepting, being supported and accepted, vanishing into and becoming all past, present and future support and acceptance. 

Nowhere is there anything hidden from the gassho.

-- shonin

The practice of a true person

My favorite Zen text is Tenzo Kyokun, Dogen's Instructions for the (Monastery) Cook.

Here is a passage to which I have returned multiple times: 

When you take care of things, do not see with your common eyes, do not think with your common sentiments. Pick a single blade of grass and erect a sanctuary for the jewel king; enter a single atom and turn the great wheel of the teaching. So even when you are making a broth of coarse greens, do not arouse an attitude of distaste or dismissal. Even when you are making a high-quality cream soup, do not arouse an attitude of rapture or dancing for joy. If you already have no attachments, how could you have any disgust? Therefore, although you may encounter inferior ingredients, do not be at all negligent; although you may come across delicacies, be all the more diligent. Never alter your state of mind based on materials. People who change their mind according to ingredients, or adjust their speech to [the status of] whoever they are talking to, are not people of the Way. -- Dogen's Pure Standards for the Zen Community : A Translation of the Eihei Shingi ed./tr. Leighton and Okumura

When we make a judgment or show a preference, we impose a delusion on what's right in front of us, ignoring the co-dependent arising of all things. Buddhist ethics is training in thusness; that which is before us, rather than that which we wish is there or wish not there.

We can cover much, if not all, of the precepts by means of a single term: "honesty." Honest living simply precludes stealing, lying, misusing, murdering, willfully injuring, gossiping, disparaging, and disrespecting. Buddha spelled out these things because training in honesty is hard.

Dogen points out that the stakes are quite high. Though he continually refers to "just sitting" as the entire Buddhist project, he explicitly sets a high bar for the behavior that gives "just sitting" a chance to even happen: "People who... adjust their speech to whoever they are talking to, are not people of the Way."

As for the attitude while preparing food, the essential point is deeply to arouse genuine mind and respectful mind without making judgments about the ingredients' fineness or coarseness....  Although they create relationship to buddha, [donations that are] abundant but lacking [in heart] are not as good as those that are small but sincere. This is the practice of a [true] person.

We might try being honest to our vegetables and see if it doesn't feel a bit like training in "right doing." 😄 

-- shonin